Talk:In hoc signo vinces

Motto

Use of the term "public motto" implies a secret motto, to which there was no reference in the case several of ISHV's listing as a motto. It is claimed as Sigma Chi's public motto because the Fraternity keeps a few secret ones. The page has been edited in light of this. ASigIAm213. — Preceding undated comment added 03:21, 17 November 2006‎ (UTC)

vinco,3.vincere, vici, victum = win —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.131.46.8 (talk) 21:54, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

This is the symbol on the front pack of cigarettes Pall Mall —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.205.250.189 (talk) 20:56, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

"in this [sign] you will conquer".

I do not think sign should be in brackets. There is no need, sign is not implied in the Latin or added to the make the English more readable. In hoc signo vinces: signo means sign, it it not added in the translation or left out by the author. What needs to be in brackets is the [will], because conquer is not in the future tense or subjunctive. So literally it reads "In this sign you conquer", the will is implied so if anything should be in brackets it is the will. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.182.0.200 (talk • contribs) 21:19, 26 September 2009‎ (UTC)

the point is that it's not there in the Greek. So, it's either "in this [sign you will] conquer", or "in this sign you will conquer", but not "in this [sign] you will conquer", which arbitrarily marks the "sign" as a gloss, but not the future tense. And no, the future tense is there in the Latin, vinces means "you will conquer". "you conquer" would be vincis. --dab (𒁳) 11:19, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Rearrangement (hidden meanings)

IN HOC SIGNO VINCES = COGNOSCENS VINI IH (knowing the vines of J.C.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.23.177.123 (talk) 23:18, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Educated Opinion on in vs. by or under

I studied Latin in high school and college, even earning an award as top student in my class. The 'In' is a mistranslation and I'll tell you why it should be 'by' or 'under'. The misunderstanding has to do with the fact that the meaning of the Latin 'in' here has nothing to do with the English word 'in' as far as the English word 'in' is a location qualifier. In the original Latin, when combined with signo it qualifies how the person will conquer, not where. The 'ordinate' (? college was too long ago) phrase or clause (single word actually, vinces) is 'you will conquer'. So the subordinate qualifiers must elaborate on that. But which manner of qualifying is 'in signo'? So, here, actually, the first one you can rule out would be locational i.e. the English word 'in' like '...as in heaven'. In that case, it really does answer "where does the will get done?" not how does it get done. But here the 'in' doesn't answer the question 'where does/will he conquer?' Although you indeed can conquer in a place, you wouldn't conquer within the confines or boundaries of the qualifier ('signo', the sign). Because 'signo' is not a place. Rather, 'in' refers subtly to the fact that you would conquer 'within' the power of the sign, or by the powers of protection of the sign. That you would exist and operate subordinate in rank to the sign, that your power to conquer comes about when you are subordinate to it. IMHO 'under' still doesn't cut it since if it was to be under the Latin author would've just used 'sub'. Also, you'd have to also include 'the name' or 'the power' to get the meaning across even more than with 'in' or 'by', and that would be adding words that aren't there.

Put it this way- In Hoc Signo Vinces means what it would mean if you're talking about the Mets. The Mets would conquer (win games) with, by, or under their logo not actually or literally inside or 'in' it. Even if it wasn't literal, the original phrase cannot possibly mean 'dressed in clothes with the sign on them'. They would've just written 'in these clothes' etc., not 'in the clothes with the sign on them' by just in signo. If they meant 'with' they definitely would have put 'cum' unequivocally. 'In' with something non-locational like 'signo' can only then mean 'by' or 'under the power/sign of' so for simplification and not adding words the best translation is "By This Sign You Will Conquer" or I'd even prefer "By This Sign Will You Conquer" as it shifts the emphasis from the conquering that you do to the sign. What makes it confusing again is that 'by' can mean 'nearby'. But that's a good subtle unintended thing because anytime the conquerer will be conquering, the sign will indeed be nearby, huh? It makes the precedent question "By what sign", or even simpler "how? how will the person conquer?' again, not where. subtle but they drilled it into you at school so it would be useful 20 yrs later. --Phaedrx (talk) 08:42, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Good point. Looking at the conventional translation from the English end, the plain fact is that in present-day English no-one does things *in* signs any more. So as a translation into present English (PE) it is simply unsuccessful. It misses the mark.

I can’t offer any opinion on whether or not the conventional translation was ever successful in this sense. It seems to me possible that ‘in’ has always been a translator’s ‘false friend’ - appearing in both source and target languages, but with different meanings. Or maybe the phrase ‘in this sign’ worked as a variant of (allusion to?) ‘in this name’. Either way, it seems right where possible for an encyclopaedia to scrutinise conventional usages, rather than perpetuate it uncritically.

‘By’ and ‘under’ are both credible candidates, in that both are possible in PE. Neither is fully clear and unambiguous. (Perhaps that’s why the outdated conventional translation continues to be quoted.) I’ve had a go at the article text to try and clarify on and around this point.

SquisherDa (talk) 00:19, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Non standard views / Moved them to a separate section asking for references

I would have simply erased the text cause apart from being seemingly irrelevant (more about the ΧΡ itself than the En toutoi nika/In hoc signo vinces sign), apart from being in essence unsourced, apart from being written in a seemingly literal translation from French (?) that makes comprehension difficult, it also seems to belong to the tradition of alternative ;-) thought; I've chosen instead to move the text to a separate section editing it a bit and adding a small :p number of citation needed tags.
P.S. FYI: I'm no real Christian, I'm not that sympathetic to Christianity ;-), I think that the syncretic origin of many things in Christianity (and other religions) is very plausible (many such things have in fact been accepted, substantiated and presented by Academia); yet von Däniken or Dan Brown-like, non sourced stuff have no place in Wikipedia, at least imo; apart, that is, from the encyclopaedic presentation of the alternative views themselves as such... Feel free to provide serious sources if you want to give credibility to such views. A vague geometric resemblance and/or some arbitrary webpages in French hardly qualify as such... ;-)
Thanatos|talk|contributions 17:04, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

To user Yopie and to whomever else it may concern:
Please come here and talk/discuss. Please do not start an edit war. Please do not revert to the supposedly last stable version. Please do not delete cn tags; especially the ones that include comments-reasons like not in source, unless of course you show us where they are stated and substantiated in the "sources" (calling such webpages sources is itself a big stretch). Please do not place such views into the main body article or especially the lead section; i.e. please keep them inside the place they belong, i.e the fringe/wacko... non standard views/theories section. Unless of course you can provide reliable sources. As I've said, keeping them and not deleting them as unsourced fantasies, is itself a stretch beyond reasonable discourse. Unless, I repeat, you can provide serious sources in which case they would certainly be welcomed... ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions 07:56, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Stubifying due to unsourced content removal

Just noting here that I'm marking this back as a stub since after removing unsourced material that has been marked six months to a year the article is almost empty except for the sourced list. Cat-fivetc ---- 12:08, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Undid your section blanking adding some refs and doing some other edits, though I've left the stub tag. The phrase, the sign, the Milvian Bridge Battle connection and all other stuff are famous, at least in this side of the world. Corrections, additions and removals, can be done later; blanking the article out completely is unreasonable in such a case. Thanatos|talk|contributions 13:53, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for adding sourcing to the article. I do however take great issue, umbrage even, at your assertion that the blanking was innapropriate. I'm not going to bother to quote policy, but you can go back yourself and see how old the tags were and it is well within policy and accepted practice to blank unsourced content after a fair chance has been given to correct the problem. I disagree also that unsourced, for all we know untrue, since we have no way to check without sourcing, content is better than no content at all. I'm guessing that we'll have to agree to disagree on one or both of these points, but again, it is out of line to say that my actions were without merit. Thank you again though for adding the extra sourcing and content to the article since it has been left to languish, for lack of a better word, for too long. Cat-fivetc ---- 08:46, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Apologies for not replying, I had not seen your comment.
Whatever the exact view/interpretation one has on how to deal with sections needing verification, the blanking you had done was way too harsh because for example in the history section the problem was lacking inline citations, not citations in general.
Now on verification in general: if a claim doesn't seem outlandish (and in this case, claims about e.g. various groups bearing this motto etc. aren't, at least prima facie, cause it is or it is regarded as a very important thing/event/... in christian history), I personally prefer fact/cn tags instead of outright removal because someone in due time might come and edit in the refs (or being more knowledgeable in the relevant field(s) refute the claim and subsequently remove them). The thing to do at a minimum, is imo to first search for verification, to do some research; take for example the coin inscriptions claims: this is not in any way my field of interest or "expertise" but after a relatively short search, I found a relevant instance and a relevant ref and added them in. On the other hand, after brief similar searches, I couldn't find sources for the other claims, so I added in specific cn tags. Now a second example: you've now practically removed the nobility section; well inside this section there was a wikilink to this; reading inter alia Constantinian and by just clicking on the link, some crosses got shown on my screen bearing some letters and symbols... :-"
So my question is: before removing the seemingly unsourced parts (yesterday or two months ago), did you first search for sources, do some research? Or was the removal justified in your view just on the grounds that there had been an absence of refs and/or a presence of fact/cn tags??? ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions 06:11, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

You have a good point, in the future I'll try to tag first and then wait a fair amount of time (IMO that is at least a few months, especially for a less trafficked article like this) before removing unsourced body content. It was in no way attempting to claim ownership but I kind of made a defacto exception for the lists, for lack of anyone else being here regularly patrolling them, to put the HTML warning in place and take a remove first approach on those. I realize that using one stance for the body paragraphs and one for the lists is messy, but marking and leaving list items that get added without sources would fill the list with unsourced items (again), before the first tagged one was old enough to remove. For lack of a better consensus at the moment, would you agree that the body paragraphs should be tagged and given a chance before anything is removed and the list items should be strictly enforced as no non-sourced items allowed? Cat-fivetc ---- 19:27, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Do as you please but imo you should abstain from removing the important stuff (e.g. history) if you won't do the necessary research first; on the other stuff, the secondary or perhaps trivial ones, I'll just comment that seeing - and having lived through some part of - the edit history of this article, my interpretation of it is that people recalling at some random moment in their life that a (or their favourite) club, group or whatever they know or are a member of, somehow uses or seems to use this motto etc., they come here (perhaps to see what it means) and edit it in (without necessarily - read never - adding refs); then these additions get cn tagged and after a time get deleted, but then there's a goto start effect and then a goto start squared and so on and so forth. I couldn't possibly know for sure they're right about their claims, I also couldn't possibly find appropriate sources for each and every (usually obscure) claim, but I think they're harmless enough to remain intact and present (unless you think some are e.g. controversial); if not for their marginal usefulness, then in order to avoid having to tag and delete them over and over again; but go ahead if you will and remove them or whatever... Thanatos|talk|contributions 20:29, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply and sorry for the delay in mine. At the risk of wiki-lawyering and/or adhering too slavishly to the rules as written, removing unsourced content is the policy. I know that there is an inclusionist position that there is no harm done, especially if it is tagged, but having a rule against unsourced content is IMO meaningless if it isn't actually enforced and the way to enforce it is to remove unsourced content, especially if tagged. In terms of the users, they'll do what they'll do but there are plenty of notices about reading the basic policies of Wikipedia before editing so, again IMO, that isn't an excuse. I also disagree with your premise that the fact that neither you nor I have the time or willingness to source content is a reason not to implement policy and delete it. If that were the case then a good chunk of cleanup would not get done across the wiki. I'll try to remember your suggestion regarding tagging, at least article body content, and giving a fair amount of time so that someone can, if they so wish, come and source the content. Cat-fivetc ---- 09:33, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Well I on the other hand am of the opinion of interpreting the verifiability rule as being about ...verifiability (leading eventually to verification or falsification) and not about instant verification or else out the statement goes instantly; provided of course the claim is reasonable etc (btw at this point other wiki-rules enter the picture)...
For example let us see the latest example: you've removed a recently added entry (here we go again... :-") when after a simple google search the first hit (and/or the short description to the right) I get leads me to the school's webpage and its banner; guess what it reads?!?!? :-"
This imo is hardly good; it begets a mindset and an environment of having rules for rules' sake; not rules in order to have, get and ensure useful and reliable content, preferably getting more and more, better and better, through time... ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions 15:33, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

'History'

Should this not properly be Legend? previously unsigned comment made by 2602:306:cf99:2080:e009:54b8:2727:4cd4 (talk) 16:25, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, I think the etymology of the two differs in that history is a scholarly record, whereas legend is, or was originally, any written documentation. Cf. the legend on a map or on a statue. Confusion amongst the concepts of myth, fable, and fiction probably contributes. — JamesEG (talk) 16:44, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

appearance in various logos and emblems

It appears to me that its presence in the Pall Mall brand is due to heritage from some crest or coat of arms. It would probably be more useful to delineate that history rather than to simply state that it appears there. — JamesEG (talk) 16:23, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

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Kallergis flag

The so-colled Kallergis flag is a fake and should be removed. Read the talk in the relevant wiki article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kallergis_family Mimis Amimitos (talk) 16:24, 23 June 2023 (UTC)